No source, born digital.
Contributions to Contemporary History is one of the central Slovenian scientific historiographic journals, dedicated to publishing articles from the field of contemporary history (the 19th and 20th century).
The journal is published three times per year in Slovenian and in the following foreign languages: English, German, Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, Italian, Slovak and Czech. The articles are all published with abstracts in English and Slovenian as well as summaries in English.
Prispevki za novejšo zgodovino je ena osrednjih slovenskih znanstvenih zgodovinopisnih revij, ki objavlja teme s področja novejše zgodovine (19. in 20. stoletje).
Revija izide trikrat letno v slovenskem jeziku in v naslednjih tujih jezikih: angleščina, nemščina, srbščina, hrvaščina, bosanščina, italijanščina, slovaščina in češčina. Članki izhajajo z izvlečki v angleščini in slovenščini ter povzetki v angleščini.
Glavni namen članka je podati deskritptivni analitični pregled in ocene dosedanjega razvoja slovenske parlamentarne arene od prehoda v demokracijo do današnjih dni. Članek je razdeljen na dva dela: (1) pregled normativnih podlag parlamentarnega in strankarskega delovanja, in (2) analitične ocene strukture parlamentarne arene, kot jo odražajo volilne ter strankarske izbire in politične ponudbe. Vpogled v sodobno demokratično parlamentarno areno v Sloveniji kaže, da je ta dokaj stabilna, a da ob naraščajočem nezaupanju in spreminjajoči se volilni podpori politične stranke kot sestavni deli parlamentarne arene posebej v drugem desetletju demokracije postajajo manj stabilne, njihovo delovanje pa tudi manj predvidljivo, kar ima posledično lahko vpliv tudi na prihodnjo stabilnost same parlamentarne arene.
Ključne besede: parlament, politične stranke, demokracija, Republika Slovenija
The main goal of this paper is to provide a descriptive analytical overview of the existing evolution of the Slovenian parliamentary arena since its transition to democracy and independence. The paper is divided into two main parts: (1) an overview of a normative insight into the parliamentary and party system, and (2) an analytical assessment of the structure of the parliamentary arena as it is reflected in electoral and parties’ choices and policy preferences. A look at the contemporary democratic parliamentary arena in Slovenia shows that it, in itself, has been quite stable, while, on the contrary, its main integral parts – political parties – have gradually become less stable and less predictable, especially in the second decade of democracy, which can potentially influence the future stability of parliamentary arena, too.
Keywords: parliament, political parties, democracy, Republic of Slovenia
Slovenia is a country without a long tradition of
statehood. It has had its current borders since 1945, when it was
constituted as a federal republic of the socialist Yugoslavia. Slovenia
became independent at the same time as it transformed into a democracy: with
the collapse of communism and disintegration of Yugoslavia in 1991. As the
most developed of Yugoslav republics – with the most advanced economy,
already well integrated in the West European markets, and ethnically the
most homogenous of the former Yugoslav federal republics – the Slovenian
transition to democracy was both smooth and quick. The process was only
interrupted by a brief but intense war at the end of June 1991, resulting
from the intervention of the federal army, which tried to prevent the
inevitable process of the Yugoslav breakup.Slovenia Between continuity and change
1990–1997, ed. Niko Toš and Vlado Miheljak (Berlin: Sigma,
2002).The Third Wave: Democratization in the
late twentieth century (London: Univeristy of Oklahoma Press,
1991).Breakdown and Reequilibration, ed. Juan Linz and
Alfred Stepan (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1978).Slovenia Between Continuity and Change 1990–1997, ed. Niko Toš
and Vlado Miheljak (Berlin: Sigma, 2002).Dvajset let slovenske države, ed. Janko Prunk and Tomaž
Deželan (Maribor: Aristej; Ljubljana: Fakulteta za družbene vede, Center
za politološke raziskave, Ljubljana 2012), 17–57.
Out of these parties, the Democratic Opposition of Slovenia, also known as the DEMOS coalition, was created through an agreement between the Slovenian Democratic Union, the Social Democrat Alliance of Slovenia, the Slovene Christian Democrats, the Peasant Alliance and the Greens of Slovenia. In 1992 the Slovenian Democratic Union split into two parties: the social-liberal wing became the Democratic Party, and the conservative faction established the National Democratic Party. A third group, dissatisfied with both options, joined the Social Democratic Party (SDSS, later simplified to SDS), which suffered a clear defeat at the 1992 elections, barely securing its entry in the Parliament. Nevertheless, it formed a coalition with the winning Liberal Democracy of Slovenia and even became a member of the governing coalition. Later it became the dominant party of the right of center under the name of Slovenian Democratic Party.
Only those socio-political organisations from the old
regime that successfully transformed themselves, as well as new formations
which managed to establish clear political identities and organisations,
were able to survive the transition processes and constitute the new
democratic party system. The successful parties generally managed to create
a widespread organisation in the field, while at the same time maintaining a
strong central party organisation and a high degree of party unity – all of
this despite the lack of politically experienced members and with only
limited financial resources. All other parties, including those with strong
international support, vanished from the public life almost overnight.
In its first two decades, the party system of Slovenia
was characterised by the relative openness, allowing for a relatively easy
entry of new parties. However, at the same time it exhibited a high degree
of party stability, with parties creating stable organisations, membership
bases and political identities. At the level of interparty competition, the
party system was initially characterised by the dominance of Liberal
Democracy of Slovenia (LDS). This was followed by the increasing bipolarity,
with one end dominated initially by the LDS and then a succession of three
other, often new parties; while the other end has become increasingly
dominated by the Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS).Političke stranke i
birači u državama bivše Jugoslavije, ed. Zoran Lutovac
(Beograd: Friderich Ebert Stiftung, 2006), 363–384. Danica Fink-Hafner,
"Slovenia: Between Bipolarity and Broad Coalition-Building," in Post-Communist EU Member States: Parties and Party
Systems, ed. Susanne Jungerstam-Mulders (Aldershot, Burlington:
Ashgate, 2006), 203–231.
Despite the relative openness of the Slovenian party
system, only a small number of new parties entered the Slovenian Parliament
in the first two decades. This trend started to change at the 2008
parliamentary elections, with the rapid decline of the LDS, strengthening of
the SD as the temporary strongest party on the left, and the entry of a new
party splintering from the LDS into the Parliament (Zares). At the 2011 and
2014 elections the instability of party systems reached new heights, with
the once dominant LDS almost completely disappearing from the scene, being
supplanted on the broad left first by the SD, then by the Positive Slovenia,
and finally by the Miro Cerar's Party, later renamed as the Modern Centre
Party. This opened a new trend of single-term parties, emerging and
disappearing from one election to the next, leading to a huge turnover in
the Parliament. Despite the increasing instability, no anti-system parties
have emerged in Slovenia, although some parties have occasionally challenged
the legitimacy of the ruling political elite and called for its replacement
at early elections.Državni zbor 1992-2012: o slovenskem
parlamentarizmu (Ljubljana: Inštitut za novejšo zgodovino,
2012). Danica Fink-Hafner, Damjan Lajh and Alenka Krašovec, Politika na območju nekdanje Jugoslavije
(Ljubljana: Fakulteta za družbene vede, 2005).
Generally we can state that political parties in
Slovenia are not based on the representation and advocacy of narrow
interests
In accordance with the Political Parties Act, a
political party in Slovenia is defined as "an association
of citizens who pursue their political goals as adopted in the party's
programme through the democratic formulation of the political will of
the citizens and by proposing candidates for elections to the National
Assembly, elections for the president of the republic and for elections
to local community bodies."Official Gazette of the RS,
no. 100 (2005): art. 1.Slovenian
Constitution itself does not define neither political parties nor their
functioning, but it provides for the individuals' right to freely
associate with others, maintaining certain legal limitations on that
right if required by the national security, public safety, and
protection against the spread of infectious diseases.
Constitution of the Republic of Slovenia, art.
42.
In terms of internal democratic governance, all the
main political parties must establish rules for the election of its
leadership, the selection of candidates for elections, and the
decision-making processes of the party’s programme platforms. There are also
certain legal restrictions with regard to persons who cannot become party
members or representatives in the leadership bodies of political parties.
However, at the same time no demand for the public availability of the
membership information is defined.Official Gazette of the RS, no. 100
(2005).
In terms of resources parties mostly rely on public
funds, while privately provided funding has a smaller role. Legally,
political parties in Slovenia can obtain funds from membership fees,
contributions from private or legal persons, income from property, gifts,
requests, the budget (national or local), and profit from the income of a
company owned by it, but not from international funds or any type of
domestic organisations with public ownership of at least 50 percent.Official Gazette of the
RS, no. 100 (2005): art. 21 and 26. See also Article 22 for
certain criteria and limitations that are set for obtaining the stated
for the acquisition of the relevant eligible funds.
However the issues with regard to the integrity of
political parties, especially with regard to the transparency of party
membership and funding, as well as issues related to the assurance of
effective control over funding have been on the agenda almost constantly
ever since the Slovenian independence. Political parties frequently, mostly
on their own initiative, fail to inform the public about their membership,
democratic governance procedures, as well as financial management. In light
of the loose legal regulations, the general public therefore only has few
limited possibilities to gain direct access to the information about the
activities of the parties.Official Gazette of the RS,
no. 100 (2005): art. 27–29.
All these factors result in significant distrust
towards political parties, facilitating the search for new but not actually
innovative party choices in the increasing bipolarity of the multi-party
system, maintained not only by the voters’ choices, but also through the
media representation of the political parties and their actions.Delo, accessed December 3, 2015, www.delo.si. Dnevnik, accessed December 3, 2015, www.dnevnik.si. Večer, accessed December 3, 2015, www.vecer.si. Prvi interaktivni multimedijski portal, MMC RTV Slovenija,
accessed December 3, 2015, www.rtvslo.si. Planet Siol.net,
accessed December 3, 2015, www.siol.net. MLADINA.si , accessed
December 3, 2015, www.mladina.si. Revija Reporter,
accessed December 3, 2015, www.reporter.si. Tednik Demokracija,
accessed December 3, 2015, www.demokracija.si. See also Greco country monitoring reports
at: Untitled 1, accessed December 3, 2015, http://www.coe.int/t/dghl/monitoring/greco/default_en.asp.
In the second half of 2015, there were 84 registered
political parties in Slovenia, which is an increase from the 74 parties
which were registered in 2012.Društva, politične stranke in ustanove - objave na
spletu, http://mrrsp.gov.si/rdruobjave/ps/index.faces.
Regarding the number of party members in Slovenia we
can only give a rough estimate, as it is very difficult to obtain credible
information from the parties. According to some estimates,st Century," paper prepared for the workshop
on ‘Political Parties and Civil Society’, ECPR Joint Sessions, Lisbon,
April 2009.
If we compare the number of parties competing at the national parliamentary elections in Slovenia between 1990 and 2014, we can see that the aggregate numbers indicate a relatively stable dynamic of the party system, without dramatic changes in the numbers of parties competing in the elections, or parties entering the Parliament, and without significant changes in the government formula. Table 1 shows that the number of parties competing at the elections ranged from 17 to 23, reaching 26 only in 1992, after the departure of the DEMOS coalition from the political scene resulted in a large number of new parties contesting the elections. Throughout the period, except for the first elections, seven or eight parties were elected to the Parliament at all the elections.
The number of parties in the governing coalitions ranged between two and five, but most of the time the government consisted of three or four parties. The patterns of governmental changes for the whole period of the Slovenian independence were characterised by the partial alternation of governing parties and partial changes in the government formula. Complete changes of governing parties were almost completely absent from the Slovenian party system, while innovations of the governmental formula mostly came about as the consequence of the emergence of new parties. In fact, the largest source of instability and volatility in the Slovenian party system has been the disappearance of old and emergence of new parties. This trend has become more important after the 2008 elections, given that the subsequent two elections resulted in completely new parties heading the government.
Table 1 also indicates that at each of the elections since 1992 at least one new party was elected to the Parliament and at least two or three parties dropped from the Parliament. However, in some cases certain parties, such as New Slovenia (NSi) which failed to gain electoral representation at a certain point, managed to enter the Parliament on a later date.
In the last decade the changes of the party system have picked up the pace. This was especially the case at the last two elections, held in 2011 and 2014, both of them called one year before the parliamentary term expired. At both of these elections two new and very successful political parties were established without being formed through a merger or secession from of one of the existing political parties. Conversely, before the 2011 elections most new parties came about mostly through splits or mergers of the existing political parties. The elections of 2011 and 2014 were also different because a few parliamentary parties existing from 1992 – two of them playing an important part in all the governments between 1992 and 2011 – failed to enter the Parliament. In 2011 the LDS and the only nationalistic party, the SNS, lost parliamentary representation, while in 2014 the oldest Slovenian political party, the Slovenian Peoples Party (SLS), failed to win any seats. These went to the winner of the 2011 elections Positive Slovenia (PS) as well as the newly established Citizens List (DLGV), which was the third biggest parliamentary party in the 2011–2014 term.
Despite the frequent creation of new parties and elimination of existing parties, the Slovenian party system has been characterised by a relative stability. In the first decade of democratic politics, the Slovenian political arena was dominated by the Liberal Democracy of Slovenia (LDS), which controlled the government for 12 years after 1992 through coalitions that included left and right-wing parties alike. With the strengthening of the SDS, more clearly defined bloc alternatives emerged, and the last four elections were characterised by a bipolar pattern of competition between the SDS and a strong left-wing party: first the LDS, then the SD, PS, and now the Party of Modern Centre (SMC).
So far the most important changes in the structure of
the party system the last two elections, affecting predominantly the
formerly dominant left and centre-left parties. In 2011 the LDS received
slightly less than 2 % of votes, while its splinter party Zares, formed for
the 2008 elections, also failed to enter the Parliament. The elimination of
the only nationalist party, Slovene National Party (SNS), which had been a
member of the Parliament since 1992, was significant as well. In 2011 the
newly-established parties – the PS (centre-left) and the DLGV
(centre-right)Teorija in
praksa 50, no. 3/4 (2013): 503.
When we shift our focus from the number of parties to the movement of voters, we can observe that the level of volatility at the Slovenian elections, as shown in Figure 1, remained comparatively high after the first elections (above 30 percent). However, in 2004 it dropped to 23 percent as a stronger bipolar pattern of party competition emerged. Since the 2008 elections volatility has been increasing again, topping 50 percent in 2014 and indicating a heightened instability of the party system as well as the weakening of links between the parties and voters and an increased willingness of voters to switch support between parties or move on to supporting an entirely new political party.
If we analyse the share of votes for the new parties at each elections we get a somewhat better picture of what drives such high level of volatility over time. In Figure 1 above we can observe that both volatility and votes for new parties have increased significantly since 2008. Still, while volatility has been fairly high from the beginning, we can see that the vote share of the new parties was relatively modest until the 2008 elections, suggesting that volatility was mostly driven by the shifts of the electorate within the established parties. However, at last two elections the share of votes belonging to new parties has been on the rise precipitously, and this accounts for most of the volatility taking place in the Slovenian elections.
When we look at the number of votes of the relevant parties in the period between 1992 and 2014, we see that the changes in the amount of party support were considerable, not only as far as the share of votes parties gained is concerned, but also with regard to the actual number of votes parties won at elections. What clearly comes across as the starkest finding is that with the end of the LDS dominance on the political scene, the voters supporting the broad left side of the political spectrum have shifted their support from the LDS to the SD, then to the PS, and finally to the SMC. On the right side, after the SLS lost the position of the second party in the party system at the 2000 elections, this consolidation took place primarily around the SDS in the second decade of democratic politics. The SDS managed to win the support of almost a third of the electorate between 2004 and 2011, only to witness the demobilization of about one third of its voters at the 2014 elections while still retaining the status of the second largest party in the context of the significantly reduced turnout.
The seats in the National Assembly over time and in particular since 2000, are increasingly becoming distributed in such a way as to make a clear distinction between the smaller and larger parties in the context of an increasing bipolarity. In this context two principal parties control over 50 % of the seats, while the remaining five or six parliamentary parties distribute the remaining seats among themselves more or less evenly.
Although the party system sees parties emerging and disappearing, for most of the period under consideration the electoral system has performed relatively efficiently in securing that the voters’ preferences have been represented and that votes have not been wasted. Since the establishment of the party system we have been able to observe that the share of voters who voted for parties represented in the Parliament, or, in other words, the share of voters whose votes are represented, increased just after the first elections. However, since then this share has remained between 84 percent and 93 percent within the period. The lowest share of represented voters (76 percent) can be traced back to the first elections in 1992, which are also the elections with the highest number of parties competing, while the best representation was achieved in 2000, when less than 10 percent of voters voted for parties that did not manage to enter the Parliament. The fact that despite the significant instability of the party system in the last decade 85 % of voters voted for parties that are represented in the Parliament is perhaps related to this very party system instability. As it happens, in the eyes of the voters such instability implies a reasonable probability that switching support to a different party will not result in a wasted vote. Furthermore, it also signifies that a large number of parties does not lead to a large number of wasted votes, or to a continued concentration of support for marginal parties.
In conclusion, when we observe the development of the Slovenian electoral and parliamentary party system, we can pinpoint several significant developments affecting the stability of the party system and changing the way it has functioned after the first decade of democracy:
The significant instability of the party system in the last decade, in comparison with the first decade of democratic politics, may indicate that the public attitudes towards political parties may be changing as well. If this is the case, it can be expected that other political institutions could be affected as well. The fact that some political parties are losing support and disappearing while others are rising without clear programmes, party identities or organisation may indicate that the voters feel a certain degree of dissatisfaction with the parties.
This is confirmed if we look at the level of the public
support for the political parties and political institutions through which
the parties operate. The public image of the political parties and the
National Assembly as the principal arena of their institutional activities
is fairly low in Slovenia. Regarding the central government political
institutions as well as some other societal institutions, the political
parties and the National Assembly are consistently assessed by the
respondents as the least trustworthy. The public opinion survey polls
(called Polibarometer) in 2010Survey Politbarometer 12/2010 (Ljubljana: Center
za raziskovanje javnega mnenja, 2010).Survey Politbarometer 03/2011 (Ljubljana: Center
za raziskovanje javnega mnenja, 2011).Delo, www.delo.si. Dnevnik, www.dnevnik.si. Večer, www.vecer.si. Prvi interaktivni
multimedijski portal, MMC RTV Slovenija, www.rtvslo.si. Planet Siol.net, www.siol.net. MLADINA.si, www.mladina.si, Revija Reporter, www.reporter.si. Tednik Demokracija, www.demokracija.si.
While the parties suffered from the lack of trust by the public since the middle of the 1990s, over the last few years the trust in the government and the Parliament has declined significantly as well. The timing of this development closely coincides with the economic crisis affecting the country. However, it also coincides with the increase in volatility of the electorate and the increased turnover, or emergence and disappearance of political parties from one election to the next. All of this indicates that the public opinion sees political parties as institutions that fail to fulfil their function, and their failure is affecting the attitude of voters towards the whole political system.
Electoral participation in the elections at various levels is a further sign of the shift in the popular attitudes towards the political system. Figure 3 shows a considerable decline in the electoral turnout since the 1992 elections, signifying a changing attitude of the public towards the elected institutions. In 1992 the turnout at the parliamentary elections was 85 percent. In 1996 and 2000 it dropped to just above 70 percent, only to fall to only 60 percent in 2004. The turnout remained between 60 and 65 percent until 2014, when it dropped to 51 %, which is one of the lowest levels in Europe for national elections. Similar trends are evident also for the presidential and local elections, where the turnout (initially at a lower level than in the case of parliamentary elections) was declining in accordance with the trends at the national elections. The level of turnout was the lowest for the European Parliament elections, as it did not exceed 30 percent in any of the three European Parliament elections so far.
The comparative analysis of the relationship between
the ideological positioning of voters and political parties in Slovenia,
with respect to their position on the political spectrum, has so far shown
that the classic economic left-right position in Slovenia is one of the
least relevant factors of electoral choice.Political Parties and Democratic
Linkage: How parties organize democracy (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2011).Democracy and Political Culture in
Eastern Europe (London: Routledge, 2006). Drago Zajc and Tomaz
Boh, "10. Slovenia," in The Handbook of Political
Change in Eastern Europe, ed. Sten Berglund (Cheltenham,
Northampton (MA): Edward Elgar Publishing, 2004). Danica Fink-Hafner and
Alenka Krašovec, "Europeanisation of the Slovenian party system–from
marginal European impacts to the domestication of EU policy issues?" Politics (2006).
What appears to characterise the social foundations of
the Slovenian party system is a stable distribution of the voters' party
identification across the political spectrum, with somewhat lesser stability
of party identity in case of the left-wing voters. Furthermore, we cannot
observe any consistent classic ideological divisions based on the
socio-economic differences, despite the issue of the role of the old and new
economic and social elites. The interpretation of history, attitude towards
the communist regime and other similar issues form a very clear symbolic
division. This dominance of symbolic politics means that with respect to
economic issues, parties sometimes behave in a way which is not likely to be
consistent with their overall ideological orientation.How Democracy Works: Political Representation and
Policy Congruence in Modern Societies, ed. Martin Rosema, Kees
Aarts and Bas Denters (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011). Samo
Kropivnik and Simona Kustec Lipicer, "Party Manifestos in
Slovenia," Prepared for delivery at the 2012 Annual Meeting of the
American Political Science Association, August 30 – September 2,
2012.
The analysis of the Slovenian parties’ electoral
programmes reveals that the character of party competition is in some
respects typical of the electoral politics in other Central and Eastern
European countries with respect to the scope and type of the prevailing
policy issues.Mapping policy preferences II: estimates for parties, electors, and
governments in Eastern Europe, European Union, and OECD
1990–2003 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). According to
the applied methodology, the scope of electoral program issues is
analyzed by measuring the frequency of the following seven domains in
each program 1) External Relations; 2) Freedom and Democracy; 3)
Political System; 4) Economy; 5) Welfare and Quality of life; 6) Fabric
of Society; 7) Social Groups.
The data shows that the Slovenian parties, in general,
keep the contents of their programmes increasingly stable over time, despite
the significant contextual changes in the society and economy over the last
decade. The priority given to particular issues in the party programmes has
been changing over time, but generally, welfare and quality of life issues
have topped the list, while the economic issues have grown in importance
over time, mostly at the expense of the decline in the priority of welfare
issues as well as all the issues related to social policy. This shift is
more obvious in the case of the leading centre-right Slovenian Democratic
Party (SDS), where we can observe a sharp shift of focus between the two
periods. A less prominent but still obvious shift took place in the
programmes of other parties, where we observe slow, gradual changes leading
to a shift in the policy orientation.Journal
of Comparative Politics 4.1 (2011): 52.
A further analysis of the 2004-2011 period reveals that
the structural differences in issue priorities clearly separate the
parliamentary from the non-parliamentary parties rather than, as already
indicated, along the lines between the left vs. right or government vs.
opposition.
Furthermore, even the new parties (PS and DLGV, SMC or ZL), which ran at the 2011 and 2014 elections with atypically short and general programmes but nevertheless experienced significant electoral success, are close to the other parliamentary parties as far as the issue structure of their party programmes is concerned. This may point to the conclusion that the electoral upheaval, affecting Slovenian politics at the 2011 and 2014 elections, was not so much about the voters trying to find a new political direction, but rather that it was a case of the voters being dissatisfied with the old political elites, therefore trying to replace them with a new set of actors without asking for credentials or assurances that the new elites in fact have any new solutions to the problems.
The Slovenian party system as an integral element of parliamentary democracy since the Slovenian transition to democracy has exhibited several significant trends. On one hand the party system has exhibited a significant degree of stability in its aggregate characteristics. The number of parties competing at elections as well as the number of elected and governing parties, the broad contours of party programmes, and the patterns of governmental alterations have remained broadly stable over time.
At the same time, while the party system has exhibited a significant degree of stability at the aggregate level, over time the instability at the level of political parties has increased. This has taken place in the context of the increased dissatisfaction of the citizens with the political parties. Electoral volatility, always high, further increased dramatically at the 2011 and 2014 elections, when the old parties were eliminated from the government from one election to the next and the share of votes for new parties reached 40 % or more. Increased volatility is just one of the trends indicating the increasingly critical attitude of citizens towards the parties and political institutions most closely related to the political parties, such as the government and the Parliament. It remains to be seen whether such a critical attitude of citizens towards the political parties will continue in the next electoral cycle. However, it is evident from the developments in the last few years that the new parties have a number of weaknesses and lack the resilience that the old parties have in terms of stable links with voters, stable party organisations allowing for steady and effective patterns of political recruitment, and stable party identity. The new parties that emerged in the 2014 elections are vulnerable the same as were their predecessors in 2011, and it is not unlikely that the degree of instability will persist, though the external pressure on the party system might decline if the economic conditions and modes of transparent governance are stabilised.
Finally, the party system is an essential element of the parliamentary system. Parties are the principal conduit for the recruitment of political elites and representation of the political preferences of voters. It is therefore not unlikely that the changes in the party system could ultimately lead to changes in the parliamentary arena.
Glavni namen članka je podati opisni analitični pregled razvoja slovenskega parlamentarnega prostora od prehoda v demokracijo in neodvisnost do današnjih dni. Sodobni demokratični parlamentarni prostor v Sloveniji je sam po sebi videti sorazmerno stabilen. Nasprotno so njegovi sestavni deli – politične stranke – postopno postali manj stabilni in predvidljivi, zlasti v drugem desetletju demokracije. To je razvidno tudi iz vse večjega nezaupanja volivcev – ne samo v politične stranke, ampak tudi v parlament in vlado – ter iz naraščajoče nestanovitnosti.
Razprava se najprej posveti normativnemu vpogledu v parlamentarni in strankarski sistem, nato pa analitični oceni strukture parlamentarnega prostora, kot jo izražajo odločitve volivcev na volitvah in politična stališča strank.
Pri slovenskem sistemu političnih strank kot sestavnem delu parlamentarne demokracije lahko od prehoda v demokracijo opazimo več različnih pomembnih trendov. Po osamosvojitvi so se postopno vzpostavili zakonski okviri za ustanavljanje političnih strank, ki so opredelili pojem, financiranje in delovanje političnih strank v državi ter jim hkrati omogočili tako visoko raven samoregulacije, da je javnost njih in njihovo podobo pogosto ocenjevala kot netransparentno. Strankarski sistem se je po eni strani v celoti izkazal za precej stabilnega. Število strank, ki so sodelovale na volitvah, število izvoljenih in vladajočih strank, splošni obrisi strankarskih programov in vzorci menjavanja vlad so na splošno stabilni. Hkrati je tej splošni stabilnosti sledila vse večja nestabilnost na ravni političnih strank, do katere je prišlo v okviru naraščajoče nezadovoljnosti državljanov s političnimi strankami. Nestanovitnost volivcev in nezaupanje do političnih strank sta se zelo okrepila, kar kaže na vse bolj kritičen odnos državljanov do strank. To velja tudi za politične institucije, ki so najtesneje povezane s političnimi strankami, na primer za vlado in parlament. Nestabilnost na ravni političnih strank se je kazala skozi številne nove stranke, ki so nastajale in izginjale od enih volitev do drugih. To je pomembno vplivalo na vzorce oblikovanja vlad in vladnih koalicij, saj so stranke vstopale v vlado, nato pa izginile na naslednjih volitvah, na katerih so jih nadomestile nove stranke. Vzrok za to nestabilnost so predvsem številne pomanjkljivosti novih strank, ki očitno nimajo ključnih stabilizacijskih elementov političnih strank, kot so stabilna povezava z volivci ter stabilna strankarska organizacija in identiteta. To velja tudi za uspešne nove stranke, ki so se pojavile v obdobju med volitvami leta 2008 in zadnjimi volitvami leta 2014, drugimi v nizu predčasnih volitev. Zato bi se lahko podobna raven nestabilnosti nadaljevala tudi v prihodnje, čeprav je možno, da bi se s stabilizacijo gospodarskih razmer in težav z upravljanjem zmanjšal zunanji pritisk na strankarski sistem in posamezne stranke. Vprašanje je tudi, ali bodo slovenskih državljani ohranili tako kritičen odnos do političnih strank v naslednjem volilnem ciklusu ali pa bi stabilnejše gospodarstvo in upravna struktura lahko morda spremenila stališča državljanov do strank in politike.
Navsezadnje ima usoda strankarskega sistema širši pomen. Strankarski sistem je bistveni sestavni del parlamentarnega sistema, stranke pa so osnovni kanal za rekrutiranje političnih elit in zastopanje politične volje volivcev. Zato bi lahko spremembe v strankarskem sistemu sčasoma pripeljale tudi do mnogo bolj temeljnih sprememb tudi v dosedanjem delovanju v političnem parlamentarnem prostoru.